more return to bless thy
LOVELACE, who now, by the loss of thee, knows the value of the jewel he
has slighted; and rises every morning but to curse the sun that shines
upon every body but him!

***

Well, but, Jack, 'tis a surprising thing to me, that the dear fugitive
cannot be met with; cannot be heard of. She is so poor a plotter, (for
plotting is not her talent,) that I am confident, had I been at liberty,
I should have found her out before now; although the different emissaries
I have employed about town, round the adjacent villages, and in Miss
Howe's vicinage, have hitherto failed of success. But my Lord continues
so weak and low-spirited, that there is no getting from him. I would not
disoblige a man whom I think in danger still: for would his gout, now it
has got him down, but give him, like a fair boxer, the rising-blow, all
would be over with him. And here [pox of his fondness for me! it happens
at a very bad time] he makes me sit hours together entertaining him with
my rogueries: (a pretty amusement for a sick man!) and yet, whenever he
has the gout, he prays night and morning with his chaplain. But what
must his notions of religion be, who after he has nosed and mumbled over
his responses, can give a sigh or groan of satisfaction, as if he thought
he had made up with Heaven; and return with a new appetite to my stories?
--encouraging them, by shaking his sides with laughing at them, and
calling me a sad fellow, in such an accent as shows he takes no small
delight in his kinsman.

The old peer has been a sinner in his day, and suffers for it now: a
sneaking sinner, sliding, rather than rushing into vices, for fear of his
reputation.--Paying for what he never had, and never daring to rise to
the joy of an enterprise at first hand, which could bring him within view
of a tilting, or of the honour of being considered as a principal man in
a court of justice.

To see such an old Trojan as this, just dropping into the grave, which I
hoped ere this would have been dug, and filled up with him; crying out
with pain, and grunting with weakness; yet in the same moment crack his
leathern face into an horrible laugh, and call a young sinner charming
varlet, encoreing him, as formerly he used to do to the Italian eunuchs;
what a preposterous, what an unnatural adherence to old habits!

My two cousins are generally present when I entertain, as the old peer
calls it. Those stories must drag horribly, that ha